Never Meant to Be
by Acerbitas
Summary: Hinata's father passes away, and the Hyuugas feel pressured to marry her to a responsible and powerful leader. Rather short. NejixHinata


**Never Meant to Be**

They were never meant to be lovers.

He smiled softly as her hands knit into the dripping washcloth, shrugged his shoulders as she bit her lip, struggling not to cry. She stayed by her father's bedside, not knowing the answers, not knowing why. She only allowed a tear to drip down her cheek as his body stiffened. Her father never spoke to her, staring blankly at the ceiling. Still stoic in death.

She was a failure.

He was a rebel.

They were never meant to be lovers.

The knife sliced burning blood from her veins; she sobbed into the covers, stifling her cries as it dug, deeper and deeper. She gasped, the pain exploding down her arm. She dropped the knife. Blood stained her covers a deep crimson red. Not able to fight for the family: not able to die for the family.

She wanted to hide from the doctors, the family, the stares. She clutched her pillow as they crowded her bedside, yelling, coaxing, begging, and arguing. She wanted them to go away. They knew she wasn't going to die. They knew she was too pathetic for that.

The burial was solemn and grim. Hanabi took the lead. Hanabi bowed her head. Hinata clutched the bandages on her arm and shivered in the freezing rain.

Neji shut his eyes, drenched in fake pity.

They were never meant to be lovers.

The Hyuugas fought over her, loud and uproarious. She tried not to listen as they endlessly debated her fate. She didn't want to know.

"Kiba…"

"Sasuke…"

Her lips quivered as she struggled to voice her own opinion. When she whispered Naruto's sacred name, they didn't hear her. She insisted. They ignored.

She lapsed into defeated silence.

"Neji," someone said.

Her wedding kimono fluttered in the wind. She wanted to run like she had always run. Run away from this man beside him, this man whose deft fingers had danced their way into her heart. He hadn't tried to love her. He had tried to kill her.

They were never meant to be lovers.

The first night he slept on the floor, offering her the bed with a sarcastic smile. His hand sifted though her hair.

The head of the household. What he had always wanted. What he was willing to die for.

Head of the household. In control.

They panted together in their incestuous bed, his cruel hands forcing her deeper into the sheets. She didn't resist. He wanted her to struggle: he dug his fingers into her bleeding flesh. She didn't resist. He barred his teeth, forcing himself further inside of her, attempting to hurt her. He dashed a hand against her face. She accepted her punishment. He smiled at her tenderly.

She shut her eyes and floated far away as the pain laced through her body.

They were never meant to be lovers.

Neji was the perfect leader; the Hyuugas prospered. Hinata shuddered meekly beside him, half miserable, half glad for her release into subservient slavery. They no longer expected anything of her.

The power over everything he had once despised excited him. They were proud of him. They followed him. She followed him.

Tradition taught her there was nothing else to be done. This was the way she would finally serve the family.

Her children were perfect. They possessed his skill.

She wondered what had gone wrong with her. She wondered why she was alive.

Aging did not bring them closer. He no longer hurt her, but his eyes were blank when he looked at her. The vessel for his children, and nothing more.

She hid her face from him.

They were never meant to be lovers.

She cared for him in the end, calmly knotting her cloth and sponging his face with dutiful fingers. She cried for him when he died, an elderly man of sixty. Still stoic in death. The family was stiff, and she had been broken.

A whisper of recognition had laced them together while he was dying. She recognized that a piece of her heart longed for him to stay; she recognized that a piece of her heart wanted him to crawl into the grave on his own. A strange feeling.

He accepted her wifely affections with a serious type of grace. A strange feeling.

Only after he died did she manage to stutter: "I cared about you."

Forty years.

"I cared about you."

They were never meant to be lovers.

The family buried them together. Born into the world of the family, wedded in the chains of the family, dead in the prison of the family.

The family had chosen their life for them.

What is fate? Is that when the world decides everything for you?

But they knew that…they were never meant to be lovers.

* * *

Hope you enjoyed that half-drabble/angst fest! 


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